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M.A., Department of Political Science, National Chengchi University; Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, and Research Fellow of Election Study Center,
Taiwan Institute for Governance and Communication Research, National Chengchi University.

The Effects of Electoral Competition and Information on Voter Turnout: The Case of the Local Council Election in Taiwan, 2005-2014

This article examines the effects of electoral competition on voter turnout conditional on the number of co-partisan candidates and incumbent reelection rates. Utilizing the advantages of SNTV-MMD systems such as the variations in the number of co-partisan candidates and incumbent reelection rates across districts, we conduct a data analysis of 486 districts of local councilors in Taiwan from 2005 to 2014, which are time-series crosssectional data. We analyze the data by employing multilevel beta regression models and the results show that, when the number of co-partisan candidates or incumbent reelection rates are relatively high, strong electoral competition significantly fosters voter turnout. The results have important implications for the effects of SNTV-MMD systems on voter turnout.

In this article, we focus on the measurement of Taiwanese attitudes on the independence-unification issue, and argue that, when analysts are not certain about how measurement errors influence the results of analysis, the best way is to take measurement errors into account in their analyses. Based on the methodology of generalized latent variable modeling, we treat Taiwanese attitudes on the independence-unification issue as unobserved, latent variables, which are measured by several manifest indicators, and evaluate the effect of these attitudes on party identification. Analyzing survey data from the Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) project conducted in 2013, we show that, first, Taiwanese attitudes on the independence-unification issue includes three types: principled supporters of independence, conditional supporters of independence, and conditional supporters of unification. Second, as shown in most of the studies on Taiwan politics, the stronger the voters prefer unification, the more likely they lean toward pan-blue parties, and vice versa.